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Long Story Short
A long time ago… in a crowdfunding campaign far far away… HeroQuest was reborn!
HeroQuest wasn’t just reborn, it was reborn with some brand new content. How is this possible!? You might ask, The “First original expansion in 30 years” is Rise of the Dread Moon! Well, that’s not entirely true, the HeroQuest Mythic Quests predate Rise of the Dread Moon by a few years. Some would be reluctant to call these true expansions though, they didn’t come in their own box, they didn’t come with their own miniatures…
The HeroQuest Mythic Quests I’m talking about are:
- Prophecy of Telor – By Stephen Baker
- Spirit Queen’s Torment – By Teos Abadia
- The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness – By Joe Manganiello
The HeroQuest Mythic quests and contents were available to any “Mythic tier” backers to the crowdfunding campaign. Along with the three questbooks, some additional content was included: 27 miniatures that represent alternate sculpts of goblins, orcs, mummies, zombies, abominations, the gargoyle, as well as alternate gender sculpts of the 4 heroes, 3 additional new heroes, a Mentor/alternate Wizard mini, The Witch Lord, prisoner Sir Ragnar, and finally the dragon Venim.
Why is all this important!? Well, this was a very limited time offer, if you are looking at the whole size of the HeroQuest community, and fanbase, only a very small number of people obtained these items. A lot of people didn’t even know about the campaign until after it was too late and it had ended.
There are a lot of people who were very unhappy about not being able to get these items. The idea of “exclusivity” really bothered a lot of HeroQuest fans, and still does (let’s not bring up the Guardian Knight again).
I’m not a big fan of the “exclusivity” either, and I’m a bit reluctant to even call it that. There is still some debate in the community as to whether the Mythic items are “exclusive” or not. The campaign only had a few miniatures that actually used that word. I think I’ll just call it “limitedness” instead. The release of these things was limited, and as of yet, it hasn’t been reprinted.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that if events hadn’t occurred in the way they did, HeroQuest would still be a relic of the past! Put yourself in Hasbro/Avalon Hill’s shoes. They didn’t know it would take off the way that it did. Sure, they were doing market research, and investigating fan communities. If you look at the numbers of all the fan communities combined, you have what, 10, maybe 15 thousand people? You can’t base a business decision on that small of a number. That’s why we have the crowdfunding in place. And the “limited” stuff, that’s to draw in more people to bite the bullet and buy into it.
Yeah, on second thought, I’m going to dig up the Guardian Knight again! No, it doesn’t bother me that it was made exclusive. Yeah, it sucks that not many people got it, but again, it was a wise business decision. They had just come off of a successful retail launch, and were still uncertain as to how the public would react to a brand new, never before seen HeroQuest product. If it failed, atleast the small number they created would only affect them. It didn’t fail though, and there was outcry, so Avalon Hill had to publish an apology that they didn’t create enough to keep up with demand. This is an important thing to remember. They APOLOGIZED! They now knew there was demand, and they promised there wouldn’t be future “exclusive” retail releases.
Not sure what order to play HeroQuest in? Checkout my unofficial list of the official quest order here!
Back to the HeroQuest Mythic Stuff
Alright, sorry about that little rant.
Recently, it was revealed that the HeroQuest Mythic content was coming back! It’s going to retail, it will be available to everyone! Mostly…
If you haven’t seen them already, allow me to present to you:
Prophecy of Telor
https://hasbropulse.com/collections/heroquest/products/heroquest-prophecy-of-telor-quest-pack
and Spirit Queen’s Torment
https://hasbropulse.com/collections/heroquest/products/heroquest-spirit-queens-torment-quest-pack
What are we Looking at Here?
They look like actual Quest Packs! Similar in size to Kellar’s Keep and Return of the Witch Lord. That’s more than any of us Mythic tier backers received!
Each pack comes with 15 themed miniatures that mirror the alternate sculpts from the Mythic content. In Prophecy of Telor, they are coloured a fiery orange, and in Spirit Queen’s Torment, the are a ghostly teal colour. I don’t know about anyone else, but I plan on attaching the ethereal keyword to any monsters that I use in the teal. I’ll have to come up with another perk for the orange monsters.
There is some variation in the sculpts provided in each pack. For instance, you’ll notice that Prophecy comes with the alternate Gargoyle, whereas Spirit Queen’s Torment comes with the alternate Dread Sorcerer. In these packs, you’ll also find two of the new heroes. Prophecy of Telor comes with the Warlock, and finally an official mini to use for her Demon Form! Of course, this is not a brand new mini, it’s just a copy of the new Gargoyle in Hero Red, but hey, it’s nice to have. Spirit Queen’s torment comes with the new Orc Bard hero.
Each pack will also include combat dice, styled in their respective Quest Pack’s colour. I’m pretty excited to get my hands on these, the more minis and dice, the better.
Every new release, since the crowdfunded version, has had better production quality than the previous. I haven’t gone through the Mythic questbooks in detail, but some keen eyed fans out there have noticed some errors in these books. My hope is that these will be corrected in the retail release. Things can only go up from here!
Not everyone is happy though! Some fans have expressed concern that this will be another limited or exclusive release. This is somewhat, but not entirely true. As of writing this, these packs are “exclusive” to the Hasbro Pulse store, so some parts of the world may not have access to them right away. According to sources on the Avalon Hill Discord Server, this is only true until the end of 2023, at which time, the product will be released to other retailers, such as Amazon.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are fans who are unhappy about this release. I’ve seen several comments that go something like: “I paid extra for the Mythic content, it’s not fair that it’s being released to the public!?”
The number of people claiming they “paid extra” for “exclusive” content is crazy! I have one question for you: HOW DID YOU PAY EXTRA!? I didn’t have an option to contribute “extra” during the campaign. The cost of the Mythic tier was $149.99, it included the Game System, Kellar’s Keep, Return of the Witch Lord, and the three new Quest Packs and minis. The MSRP for the Game System according to the Hasbro Pulse website is $134.99. Then each of the extra Quest Packs are $33.99, that’s a total of $289.95. That means that we paid LESS! Even if someone only bought the Game System, Kellar’s Keep, and Return of the Witch Lord, they still paid more than we did for ALL of that extra content.
I don’t see anything to complain about to be honest, we got a deal!
So, What are we Missing!?
You may notice that there is one thing still missing here. The Mythic Quest: They Crypt of Perpetual Darkness.
This is where the waters get a little murky. We don’t really know a whole lot about what’s going on here. From what I gather from other content creators, there may be some legal issues between Hasbro and Joe Manganiello over this Quest Pack. What that means is anyone’s guess. Maybe Joe, or Hasbro aren’t happy with the amount of royalties that one should pay the other for sales. Or it could just be that Joe doesn’t want to let go of this thing that he created.
On the other hand, I’ve seen it stated in interviews online that Avalon Hill has “EVERYTHING” related to HeroQuest. Now this was stated in the context of the classic European released content, but one could read between the lines and assume that “EVERYTHING” also includes The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness.
Who knows, but for now, this one is up in the air.
Let me know what you think about these new quest packs being released to the public. I think it’s great, but feel free to disagree with me. I’d love to hear all opinions, just be civil about it!
Thanks for stoping by, hope to see you again soon!
I have been a fan of hero quest since I was a child as it came out in 1989 the year I was born and my parents owned a copy we played alot when I was growing up. In my adult life I was able to find an unsealed copy that had never been played and became the proud owner of this happiest piece of my childhood. When I found out it was being re released I was extremely excited sadly I wasn’t in a position to back the kickstarter but since then I have purchased every single expansion that has been released to the general public. I really really hope to see more expansions especially the Crypt of perpetual Darkness! As a father of 2 myself I have shared this game with my children and I hope they will someday share it with theirs. Avalon Hill has done excellent with the product. The figures, the quests, the box art, everything about it is fantastic and I’m so glad to be able to not only play it again but share it with my kids and my friends! I look forward to whatever comes next!
Needed this in my life! woop woop
Thanks for the article, very good summary of the events. About people who say that they paid “extra” for the original Mythic content probably they mean that they had to get it through the second hand market because they didn’t have the opportunity to buy it directly via the crowdfunding campaign, especially people from other countries different than North America ones.
Avalon Hill and hasbro just need to stop using the word “exclusive”… this way as a company they can test the water and see reaction for more contents and then decide if something is going to be successful. Commander is a perfect example. Could have sold a whole lot more of them. Either way the original mythic tier will still hold a certain higher value to certain people even if the crypt is released at a later stage…
Surprised you didn’t mention the lack of an tile that would have been nice for that one area in Telor. I had an idea about the orange monsters. I think I will make them imbued with a magical flame and any hero staring their turn next to one will take 1 fire damage .